Can animals be caring and compassionate

That maybe your natural instinct - but it might not be that guy's. What evidence do you have that his instinct was not to help. Maybe his instinct said help but his conscious thought tried to over rule it "Don't do it, it's dangerous, someone else will do it...somebody with more training and who hasn't just had a big meal....".As humans, the instinct seems to be "go to extraordinary lengths to help out one of your own and go to extraordinary lengths to ignore or harm those that are not of your own." What is considered 'one of your own' is malleable. You could split 20 people into two random groups and members of both groups will feel they are stronger than the other team at whatever arbitrary task you assign them.Convince someone that 'your own' includes your nation (With its Founding Fathers) and they might kill and die for their country (the best units are those with absolute cohesion...a 'band of brothers' you might say). Convince them it is their religious 'brothers and sisters' - and they'll kill and die for them just as easily. It is certainly beyond it's norm - but birds have been known to feed cuckoos and other bird's children to the point of self exhaustion (and have even fed fake birds setup by evil ornithologists, to exhaustion). Maternal and paternal instincts are incredibly strong - and if they 'make a mistake' the results can be striking.

Not necessarily.If I die - so that my 10 twin brothers can live - my genes have a much better chance of being passed on to the next generation (since my twin brothers have a copy of my entire genome inside of them). Therefore my dying increases my genes' reproductive success extraordinarily!Which is why sterile castes of insects are not a mystery to evolutionary biologists.Once you realize that an individual human's reproductive success is contingent on their being other individual humans on his side in this dangerous world - it should seem less mysterious to you. There's no evolutionary advantage to masturbation feeling nice. It does so because it simulates sex by stimulating the same receptors etc. Likewise - caring for a cat may well fire some of the same reward centres as caring for your own child. Not the same perhaps - but a sufficient proximity. If the crow thinks the kitten is its child (as some animals might mistake a person for a parent) then there's no explanation needed.Evolution doesn't guarantee crows will be perfect.The reasons why animals and humans have similar emotions isn't because it is an advantage to animals to have similar emotions to humans but because humans, and other animals have inherited those emotions from their ancestors.

Indeed - but I fail to see how that is problematic to what I am saying. I'm not suggesting that in the heat of the moment, the brain does genetic or social calculus. It applies learned biases. If you have learned that all humans are one group - you might be as inclined to help an Indian as your next door neighbour. Most people show some biases - and some experiments indicate they may be more biased towards immediate siblings than cousins, for example.This shortcut works because for primates one 'group' is almost always ones extended family or someone you need to exist in order to survive/mate.Some people feel that pets are as deserving of respect as any other member of the family and so it is no surprise if they feel that way that they would risk their lives for them. Their genes bias them towards helping family and allies, and they have learned that their dog is family. Or maybe childhood in some species is dangerous enough that risking your life for your siblings has negative expected evolutionary value?Cooperation is a strategy that can have a net positive gain on all parties. Where that is the case, and where it is not dominated by other strategies - we might anticipate it can evolve. I do agree that learning certainly comes into it.

I would agree that there were tensions between survival instinct, social approval instinct and social loyalty instinct etc. I wouldn't say that only survival instinct is natural, by which I assume mean 'hardwired'.This can be shaped through learning and the influences. So if we believe we survive death might help us over-ride the survival instinct in some cases. Of course - mixed strategies (cooperating with the community, and exploiting the community) are perfectly possible within an evolutionary framework. I have already explained why people do good things for others - if they consider 'all humans' as one group, they'd happily do it. This is a very modern view though - certainly not an evolved position. And how do your genes successfully detect that someone is related to you? It's not like animals generally talk to each other, right? They rely on other clues, as do we on some level. Proximity is a good clue. The way other family members treat them is another good observable clue.Of course, this convenient shortcut means that sometimes we treat bastard brothers as if they were full brothers, step fathers as if they were real fathers, adopted children as if they were our own and even think of our work colleagues as brothers (as in the army)... Yes. But you can't do that by actually overcoming your natural instincts which is impossible. You redirect them. There is some evidence that male coalitionary violence is a big part of being human. What were expecting me to do: give you a full psychological account of what it is like to be that bird? If the bird thinks the kitten is a perma-child then all of what you said wouldn't apply for example. If the bird grows bored when the cat grows up that'd be something. There is also a 'play' instinct that is expressed in adults across species and that may also be coming into play. It appears to me, that since there are so many examples of it happening - it is their natural instinct.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.